OREM — Jason and Natalie Fairbourne are busy preparing for their next college assignment: an in-depth look at a poor Kenyan village.
But they won't be poring over books and searching the Internet to finish the semesterlong project.
Jason and Natalie Fairbourne, who attend Utah Valley State College and Brigham Young University respectively, will leave this month for a six-month internship teaching people in impoverished countries how to build better lives.
They're taking what they've learned inside the walls of Academe to help solve the world's problems.
They plan to live in a canvas tent among the villagers, making sure lessons aren't forgotten after volunteers with a humanitarian group finish projects and leave.
"This is really what we want to get involved with for our future careers," said Jason Fairbourne, during a workshop on how to build adobe bricks with wet clay and straw at UVSC's Mountainland Applied Technology Center.
The couple work with Choice Humanitarian, a Utah-based nonprofit that organizes more than 30 service trips a year to Third World countries.
The 10- to 20-day "expeditions," as they are called in the organization, are paid for entirely by volunteers.
They also pay a share of the project on which they work side-by-side with the men and women of the village.
Among the projects, they've built schools, sanitary water systems and adobe stoves for cooking.
"The whole purpose is to help people help themselves," said Crystal Ashton, who coordinates the group's trips. Some 100 volunteers will head to Kenya, Mexico and Peru this month. Ninety more have signed up for July.
Ashton believes the stoves, which will be introduced in Kenya next week, save both lives and the environment.
Because adobe heats rapidly, less wood is needed to fuel the fires. In turn, that cuts down on the number of trees chopped down for fuel.
Without the stoves, women must cook over an open flame inside tiny houses. Repeated smoke inhalation is believed to be the reason many women in poor countries suffer respiratory infections, Ashton said.
"A stove seems so simple to us," she said. "Really, it's the equivalent to a woman getting a Lexus in America."
Joel Bradford, director of UVSC apprenticeships, heard about Choice Humanitarian through his family.
He's now involved in a personal level — and hopes to weave his professional life into the organization, as well.
There are plans to start a Humanitarian Service Club, he said, and UVSC may start giving credit for service trips.
For example, environmental science students could teach villagers how to tap wells and operate water systems. Construction and electrician apprentices would be able to lead volunteer teams charged with building a school.
"One good tradesman is worth a lot," he said.
Bradford also wants to start training the volunteers ways to easily teach men and women how to build — and fix — such simple technology as adobe stoves and water pumps.
"I'd love to have two or three applied-technology people who could teach simple techniques," Ashton said.
"We'd like to get the students into real world scenarios, to see if we can use their training to find a solution to some of the world's problems."
E-MAIL: jeffh@desnews.com